Active Participation

The Council requires a full, conscious and active participation in 'liturgical celebrations'. 'Celebratio' in Latin contains within it the idea of a great assembly, a concourse, a congregation. It is therefore a participation in the action of the liturgical assembly. This, the Council asserts, is demanded by the nature of the liturgy and is the right and duty of Christian people by virtue of their baptism. Now we get to the heart of the matter.

'Who celebrates the liturgy?' asks the Catholic Catechism (CCC 1136). Liturgy, it answers, is an 'action' of the whole Christ (Christus totus). .. it is the whole community, the Body of Christ united with its Head, that celebrates. By our baptism, we are part of the Body of Christ, and it is our right and duty to act as part of the Body of Christ; it is the Body of Christ which celebrates the liturgy.

I would argue, therefore, that active participation means being present at the liturgy as 'doers', as the Actor, as those who really perform the liturgical action. This is more than a mental and spiritual concentration on what someone else is doing. It is being part of the doing. The people's postures and movements, their words and singing, are a sign of their place in liturgical events (which) are not private actions but celebrations of the whole Church... these celebrations of the whole body which is the Church touch the individual members of the Church in a way related to the differences of ranks, of roles and of levels' of participation (actualis participationis) (SC 26).

What then of silence in the liturgy or listening to the proclamation of the word or the Eucharistic Prayer? I am convinced that we must understand the proclamation of the word as more than the action of the reader before an audience. The activation of God's saving word in the liturgy takes place in a proclamation from heart to heart, from faith to faith, in such a way that the engagement of the entire liturgical assembly makes God's word something alive and active (Heb 4:12). The liturgy of the word is ministered by a reader or cantor but is a divine event for and within the whole assembly. The Eucharistic Prayer is given voice by the priest but it is the whole of the gathered Church which offers in thanksgiving the holy and living sacrifice. The 'doing' of the liturgy does not demand that each individual does every part of the liturgy, but it certainly means that each individual is fully conscious that they are part of a communal action. The liturgy is my prayer in so far as I throw my lot in with the Church at prayer.

Therefore whatever gives people a sense of being present at the liturgy as doers is of paramount concern, the aim to be pursued above all else. This embraces not only the activity of the liturgy, but the way the assembly is arranged and relates together as a body, the sense of ownership of the corporate liturgical action, and of course the way in which we actualise and enter sacramentally the great saving act of Christ on the cross.

This article was originally published in Liturgy News Vol 38(1) March 2008. Reprinted with permission.

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